What Makes You Beautiful – Featuring Leana

The blogging world can be quite an aesthetically driven industry. From blog layout, to picture quality; blogging is equally a visual journey as it is a literary one. For some, this is where the journey starts and ends. A click on a link…a brief affair…a little peep into the life of someone who risked to share aspects of their lives online. But beneath all the aesthetics lies a voice…a person…a soul…a familiarity we come to love.

Leana is a fellow blogger with a strong online presence! Managing her own blog (Hipstyler, Pretty & Ginger ), as well as the Hey Gorgeous brand’s twitter account; reading through her daily tweets and weekly posts gives one a little insight into how this quirky little mind thinks! Upbeat and full of energy, Leana first crept into my heart when I newly emerged onto the blogging scene. She was one of the first people to reached out to me during those early blogging days… and while I was still struggling to find my way around the internet!

Sometimes, in this virtual world (filled with editing apps and filters) one comes to rely on the voice instead of the visual. Every tweet, every update, all the things you blog about…these become your virtual footprint. Leana has become notorious for her funny faces and sharp sense of humour and she wears these like a suit of armour against the world. But sometimes she let’s her guard down; and littered sparsely between her humour induced posts, we get a glimpse of the vulnerable Leana too. So though I’ve only physically met Leana on two occasions, her presence, conduct and support online has made her someone to admire.

What makes Leana Beautiful to me? Besides her to die for figure and enviable set of abs?…It’s the positive energy she exudes on a daily basis! The love and laughter she spreads amongst fellow bloggers. She is completely unselfish at casting the spotlight on fellow bloggers; new and old and even went as far as featuring bloggers in her #projectfeelgood series. It’s despite what life throws at her, she continues to smile, to make us laugh, to uplift the next person with kind words and wicked sense of humour…also, her abs and her funny faces 😉 These are the things that make Leana special to me…these are the things that make her Beautiful!

So Leana, what makes You beautiful? When I was asked to write about
what I think makes ME beautiful, I instinctively wanted to joke with a simple
“makeup”. As I giggled at myself, I quietly conceded that, while I’m no oil
painting, one of my most beautiful traits has to be my (sometimes warped) sense
of humour. Over the years (and believe me, coming to this revelation wasn’t
easy) beauty isn’t one dimensional or uniform – it should actually be called
individual beauty. Individual beauty encompasses everything that makes you, you. I quite like my long nail beds, my
skin tone, my arms and shoulders, my perky B-cup boobs and I’ve made peace with
the physical traits that I can’t change. I like the way I look after myself,
love and care for others, carry myself despite the fact that I sometimes wish
the world would swallow me whole. I like that I pray on my drive to work,
carefully think things through before I speak and how I don’t care if people
don’t like my ensemble for the day. Though these aren’t conventional means of
measurement for “beauty”, they make up who I am, which I think, makes me
beautiful. There’s also makeup…